“Poor little fellow!” exclaimed Edith as soon as she saw him, and in a moment she was behind his chair.

“Shall I cut it up for you?” she asked as she lifted his knife and fork from the table.

The child turned almost with a start, and looked up at her with a quick flash of feeling on his face.  She saw that he remembered her.

“Let me fix it all nicely,” she said as she stooped over him and commenced cutting up his piece of turkey.  The child did not look at his plate while she cut the food, but with his head turned kept his large eyes on her countenance.

“Now it’s all right,” said Edith, encouragingly, as she laid the knife and fork on his plate, taking a deep breath at the same time, for her heart beat so rapidly that her lungs was oppressed with the inflowing of blood.  She felt, at the same time, an almost irresistible desire to catch him up into her arms and draw him lovingly to her bosom.  The child made no attempt to eat, and still kept looking at her.

“Now, my little man,” she said, taking his fork and lifting a piece of the turkey to his mouth.  It touched his palate, and appetite asserted its power over him; his eyes went down to his plate with a hungry eagerness.  Then Edith put the fork into his hand, but he did not know how to use it, and made but awkward attempts to take up the food.

Mrs. Paulding, the missionary’s wife, came by at the moment, and seeing the child, put her hand on him, and said, kindly,

“Oh, it’s little Andy,” and passed on.

“So your name’s Andy?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  It was the first time Edith had heard his voice.  It fell sweet and tender on her ears, and stirred her heart strangely.

“Where do you live?”

He gave the name of a street she had never heard of before.

“But you’re not eating your dinner.  Come, take your fork just so.  There! that’s the way;” and Edith took his hand, in which he was still holding the fork, and lifted two or three mouthfuls, which he ate with increasing relish.  After that he needed no help, and seemed to forget in the relish of a good dinner the presence of Edith, who soon found others who needed her service.

The plentiful meal was at last over, and the children, made happy for one day at least, were slowly dispersing to their dreary homes, drifting away from the better influences good men and women had been trying to gather about them even for a little while.  The children were beginning to leave the tables when Edith, who had been busy among them, remembered the little boy who had so interested her, and made her way to the place where he had been sitting.  But he was not there.  She looked into the crowd of boys and girls who were pressing toward the door, but could not see the child.  A shadow of disappointment came over her feelings, and a strange heaviness weighed over her heart.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said to herself.  “I wanted to see him again.”